Unlimited

Unlimited atonement is the doctrine that Christ’s redemptive death was for all persons—both the elect and the unelect. A number of verses are cited in support of this viewpoint. For example, 1 Timothy 2:4-6 affirms that God “desires all people to be saved.” First Timothy 4:10 refers to Christ as “the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” First John 2:2 affirms of Christ, “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” Isaiah 53:6 tells us that “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Notice that the same all who went astray are the all for whom the Lord died.) In 2 Peter 2:1 we read that Christ died even for false teachers.

My personal belief is that seemingly restrictive references can be logically fit into an unlimited scenario much more easily than universal references can be made to fit into a limited atonement scenario. No one denies that Christ died for God’s sheep and His people. The question is, did He die exclusively for them? Certainly if Christ died for the whole of humanity, there is no logical problem in saying that He died for a specific part of the whole (see Galatians 2:20).

Ron Rhodes, 5-Minute Apologetics for Today: 365 Quick Answers to Key Questions (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2010).